The reality of the media landscape today is unfair to satirists and science fiction writers. How can they possibly keep up? Vice's "Adventures in North Korea," one of the most heartless acts of pure sensationalism ever recorded, is straight out of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, only slightly more bizarre. And on Sunday, NBC premieres All-Star Celebrity Apprentice, a species of entertainment out of dystopia. A bunch of has-been celebrities with personality disorders and carved-up faces compete in fundraising games all in the name of charity or keeping their careers alive or something. Lil Jon is the most sensible and level-headed person present — that's how bad things are. Gary Busey is the most honest, the most memorable, and also the most obviously unstable — watching him feels actually wrong. At the center of the whole farrago is The Donald, the still eye in the hurricane of narcissism and greed, an object of pretty much pure self-satisfaction and contempt.

Why do I hate Donald Trump so much? Why do we all hate Donald Trump so much? The most obvious answer is the sheer magnitude of his narcissism. The opening scene of All-Star Celebrity Apprentice presents the whole cast in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which Donald describes as "a personal favourite." I admit this made me laugh. We can all relax now: Human civilization and its achievements have been approved by Donald. And he wasn't kidding when he made this remark. He honestly feels that it's a score for the Met to win his respect. This is the kind of self-regard necessary to accuse presidents that they aren't American citizens. So Donald Trump is a massive narcissist. We all know that. But as Donald's show demonstrates ably, Trump doesn't have a monopoly on narcissism by a long measure. There is an endless supply of narcissists in show business. Why should I hate Donald for this particular vice more than others? And yet I do. I distinctly do.

Is it the wealth or, rather, his unabashed celebration of his wealth? Possibly. The Donald emanates tasteless expenditure like nobody else. He is the guy who tells you how much his car costs before he tells you how it runs. He's the guy who looks at a Van Gogh and thinks That's worth eighty million dollars. Everything he is and everything he has, from his wives to his clothes, is an empty status symbol. On the other hand, unlike lots of other ostentatious rich people who makes displays of themselves, he is not in any way a criminal. Even Martha Stewart got caught for insider trading, but I don't hate her, even though she too has a media empire based on conspicuous consumption and focused entirely on her personal brand. The Martha appears vastly more human in every way than the Donald.

So what is it? The obliviousness? Even Piers Morgan, the guy who sits in the boardroom with him during All-Star Celebrity Apprentice and who is widely despised in his own country, does not provoke anywhere near the same animosity, and he was editor of News of the World. By all rights, he should be much more despicable. Despite Trump's complete self-obsession and the fact that he is obsessed with how people regard him, he seems to have no idea what he looks like. In general, I don't like to judge people on what they wear. Or rather I judge their intelligence and their taste based on their clothes, but not their moral state. And yet the fact that Trump cannot get a collar that fits his neck upsets me. A man who has a tailor but won't listen to him is truly contemptible.

Really, it all comes down to his hair. The hair asks the fundamental question of the man: Who does he think he's fooling? He can't possibly think he's getting away with this, can he?

And here I think is the true source of why Donald is so intensely hateable, why he is the only person on Twitter everyone is allowed to swear at. It's not the narcissism, the shallowness, the stupidity, or the obliviousness. It's that he's getting away with it, that his style works. All the intelligence and humor of Spy magazine couldn't budge him, and if Spy couldn't, who can? He is proof of the fact that the world, as it is currently constructed, is a wonderful place for obliviously shallow narcissists. Donald didn't make that world. He just inhabits it. But he is its perfect icon, and that is definitely a good enough reason for hate.